Sensibilities

How to spell sensibilities

13 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce sensibilities

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does sensibilities mean?

1. nounA person's refined feelings or moral sensitivities, especially ones that can be offended or hurt.

Sensibilities in a sentence

• The comedian's crude jokes offended the sensibilities of several guests.

• The editor softened the report to avoid bruising anyone's sensibilities.

Where does sensibilities come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb sentire, meaning 'to feel' or 'to perceive', which also gave English a whole family of relatives including sense, sentiment, and sensitive. From sentire came the late Latin adjective sensibilis, meaning 'capable of being perceived' or 'having feeling', and from that the noun sensibilitas, the quality of being able to feel. English took the word through Old French sensibilite in the late medieval period, and by the 1700s 'sensibility' had blossomed into a fashionable term for refined emotional responsiveness and delicacy of feeling, the very quality celebrated in novels of that age. The plural 'sensibilities' came to mean a person's tender feelings or moral sensitivities that might be offended. The spelling trap lies in the quiet, unstressed middle: the -sibili- stretch is full of schwa sounds, so the 'i' vowels are easy to swap or drop when writing from memory.

How the word is built

• sens- (from sentire: to feel, perceive)
• -ible (capable of)
• -ity (state or quality)
• -es (plural)